


Talking to the Moon

by Ithela



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Because Harry Did Not Escape a War Unscathed, Bittersweet Ending, But Only For What I’ve Written So Far, F/M, Harry Potter is Harry Styles, Harry is Lord Black, Heartbreak, Idiots in Love, Introspection, Love Triangles, M/M, More Tags If I Ever Figure Out How This Works, Not Actually Unrequited Love, References to Depression, Secrets, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, True Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 13:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17867951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithela/pseuds/Ithela
Summary: A part of him wants to break into the Department of Mysteries, steal a time turner and rewrite everything. It screams, go back, go back you stupid idiot and don’t let it end. But really, he wouldn’t care if it ended again. He just wanted to start it all over again.Or: Broken by war, Harry Potter flees the Wizarding World and the four names written on his back. In a span of five years, Harry Styles achieves his dreams, falls in love, and forgets the life he lived, but the good things in life always end and for Harry Potter nothing can ever end peacefully.





	Talking to the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Updated: April 18, 2019  
> Edited for typos and ambiguity.

They announce the reopening of Hogwarts a month after the battle. It’s June,  somewhere between the sixth and the eleventh, and Harry can’t quite remember a life before.

The past month has been an adventure. Not a particularly joyous one, not an exciting one, but not horrible either, just—exhausting.

He’s locked himself in 12 Grimmauld Place like some eighty year old recluse or a teenage fangirl with a penchant for stalking. Groups of people once foreign to him rearing their ugly heads; he wonders how Romilda’s doing, if she survived, or if she’s now with Dumbledore in the great train station in the sky. They’re likely to be living a better life than him.

The Black ancestral home is still a ramshackle decaying manor, barely habitable and if the thick layer of dust that almost kills him with a coughing fit is any indication, barely breathable.Traces of Molly’s hard work remain, but only in the rooms most frequented. Harry discovers scores of rooms unopened and only accessed by the current lord. He leaves them be and stays near the main halls.

The curtains are new, the wallpaper only faintly stained, and the upholstery is free of holes. It’s not home, but it’s close, more so than the Dursley’s ever was, and more than Hogwarts can now be. Most importantly it is, in someways, his. For once in his life, he doesn’t have to pretend. He thinks he’s chosen this place because its the only place that allows him to be but he knows that’s a lie; the true reason is. Far more masochistic. This is the only place where a shadow of Sirius, perhaps bitter and resentful and a little mad, but Sirius, still roams. There’s something comforting in that fact, even if Walburga Black sees fit to destroy his quasi peace in erratic fits of screams. “Filth, half-breed!” As if he ever cared about blood purity and gaining the approval of a dying sect of a broken society. Purposefully and spitefully, he roams the halls like some ill begotten specter and dreams of razing the place that hurt Sirius most. Sometimes he takes the Elder Wand, destroys the omnipresent apathy of his psyche, and reminisces fifth year when his fury ran deep and dark and warm. His gaze turns red, and it’s all too easy to explode in angergriefsadnessdespairhorrorguiltregret. Spells rush out, break against brick walls and steel candelabras like the madness in his mind, plaster smashes in sparks of redgreenblueyellowblack. He doesn’t know who he hates more: Voldemort or himself. He killed the man, but somehow it feels as if he killed himself as well. Harry feels lost, empty, bereft of the purpose that had crafted him into a child soldier since the age of eleven. The mindless destruction is a release. It gives him a rush, a purpose, it fills the void in the aching cavity of his chest, between the remnants of a blackened heart and broken lungs, but it never lasts long. By the end he is just as empty as he was to begin with and just as lonely as he’d always thought himself to be, just as broken as they always said he was.

Kreacher, silver pendant round his neck and Hogwarts sack on his shoulders stops by sometimes, cooks a dish, and cleans. He never says a word about the splinters of wood in the halls and the white flakes that line most carpets like fresh snowfall. He snaps his fingers, and its gone as if it never even was, as if Harry’s grief was not as important or as all consuming or as infinite as he thinks it. As if he could somehow claw his way out and recover. As if there is still hope. The nights when Kreacher finds Harry lying prone on the ground from fire whiskey, Harry understands the grief has drowned him again but Kreacher never says a word. Instead he picks up the bottles, drags him to bed, and lets him grieve as the green-eyed wizard believes best. He flounders and gasps and drowns and wants to die, but no one ever lets him. They don’t scream or shout. They are steady and stolid and there like no one has ever been.

Harry thinks the old elf understands to some degree. He wonders if losing Regulus had hurt Kreacher as much as losing Sirius had Harry but he doesn’t think it right to ask. The house elf’s generosity and compassion could only extend so far.

His mourning is interrupted by a letter from McGonagall. She sends her condolences in a pretty cursive font that hurts Harry’s eyes whenever he attempt to read it, though that could simply be the poor eyeglass prescription Petunia purchased three years ago and he has yet to replace. The missive itself would be an impersonal affair, another affectation to a nameless student, but she adds a small note at the end that perhaps reveals the affection she has for him and his parents.

She’s not writing to Harry Potter Boy-Who-Lived. She’s writing to James and Lily’s son, to Just Harry. She says they would’ve all been proud of him. She tells him to keep his nose clean and let himself grieve. She tells him there will always be a place in Hogwarts for him. And that would be fine if, for once in his life, people did not seek to confine him to the possessions of others. If they would just look at him as Harry and not LilyandJames’ son or some faulty weapon sent to be martyred. It leaves a pang in his heart, a tight feeling in his chest, and the burn of bile in his throat. For a second, he rages. Couches and shelves smash against cinder blocks, tomes go up in flames because it isn’t fair.

It takes him a while to realize his life will never be fair, but when he does, he breathes deeply through his nose, and lets go. Harry ignores McGonagall’s words. He writes back a cold, calculated letter that must elucidate his furygriefangerdespair because he doesn’t get a reply, and a part of him is almost sorry for his abrasiveness. He knows his last letter made Hermione cry. Ron had sent him a howler. It had been the red head that raged then, and Harry had taken the verbal assault with a masochistic glee and heartbreak. A tear stained apology followed after, but Harry had burned it promptly. Hermione and Ron were Harry’s first friends but they’d been walking on eggshells around each other since the day after.

He tells himself, late at night, that it is for the best, that he ruins everything and kills any who love him. And Harry wishes it weren’t so, wishes all he loved didn’t turn to dust and ash but it does. (He can’t shake the guilt that Fred is dead because he wasn’t enough. That Sirius and Remus died because he was weak. That James and Lily died for something so worthless.)

The green eyed conqueror stays in bed for another week. When he can finally make it downstairs he showers, dresses in Dudley’s ragged hand me downs, and casts a simple glamour on his appearance. Green eyes lose their vibrancy, dark hair lies weirdly flat, and the minor tan he’d gained from their time on the run becomes a deathly pale. He meanders down Diagon Alley like a piss drunk vagabond. He stares blankly at merry displays, laughs coldly at the happiness he sees, and sits at empty tables until fearful employees timidly ask him to leave. He thinks they see his innate brokenness. Perhaps they glance at the small, pale figure and see something empty. It doesn’t matter. He leaves without a word.

He apparates to Hogsmeade next. This time he straightens his back and strolls with a purpose. Rosmerta’s back to work and she delivers him the daily special without a second glance. He calls her back and when Harry asks about the nearby castle, she says the school offers more good open and safe than it does closed.

Let the dead lie dead, is what they want to say and he thinks it makes sense, in that minuscule part of his mind that isn’t overwhelmed with grief. The world keeps turning; you either move with it or wither away. He’s just not sure which one of the two he’ll follow.

In the end, the decision is made for him.

McGonagall’s second letter comes in the first week of July. She offers him a place before the first brick is laid. Someone finds out and letters flood his home. First they tout the word teacher, and he thinks his despair must have been palpable in his replies, face ashen with grief and memories of Remus as he writes, because they quickly pen student.A part of him wants to accept. A part of him thinks it’s what Sirius and Remus would have wanted. But on the day he arrives at the school to oversee repairs, Harry finds he can not step on the hallowed ground. Hogwarts was the only home he had known for six years, and maybe it would always be home for the boy he was but he isn’t that boy anymore. He had died that night, almost a year ago, when he’d flown from a little house on a street with other houses just like it. He had died when people had fallen for him.

Harry can’t go because he isn’t Harry Potter, not anymore. So he writes to McGonagall, and he thanks her, and then he falls back into bed to try and control the despair that consumes him.

In reality he hides from the fate that slowly approaches.

His fingers shake in his sleep. There’s a restlessness in his blood, an itch that prickles the layers of his skin and makes the hairs on his arms stand. Something boils in the collections of his cells waiting to burst. The books he read at a delusional fifteen warned it was his magic. Warned he should release it. Warned of what could come next. And he knows he’ll be eighteen soon, knows he’ll wake up that day with black words written across his arms or back. Maybe a single set, maybe two, maybe none at all.

He remembers when he’d first heard of the concept. A stupid eleven. Back when he still believed in the good of others and that the Wizarding World was an escape from the normal, repressive life he’d live with the Dursley’s. It had been Hermione, one night by the fire, that had explained to him how special wizards were, how they needed an anchor.

‘Magic created us, Harry. It’s what wizards believe. A sentient body of energy looks after her children. Every single one of us, somewhere out there, has that other half.’ She’d said it so emphatically, so hopeful for reasons he didn’t understand then but understood later to be desperation, despair and an innate need to be accepted. He’d hugged her, and his heart had yearned for that half.

He’d met a lot of pairs throughout the years, a couple of triads and that one quartet during his fourth year. It depended on your power and its volatility. Most could control their gifts by the time their education is over. Their other is a failsafe, something to keep them balanced. Some didn’t need one, some were born far before theirs, or long after. And some had been corrupted long before they could be given one. Dumbledore had speculated Riddle’s own half had been lost by the second time he’d split his soul. Something’s were so broken, so defiled and corrupted, they’d lost the integral part that had made it possible to be the half of someone else’s whole.

Harry wondered if that would happen to him.

Surely he killed enough people. Surely he deserved it. A part of Harry hates himself so much. Somedays he just wants to fade away. Somedays he just wants to explode with all the instability that lurches inside of him. But the world never listens.

The mindless sheep that had just as easily condemned him offer him a place in the ministry. They don’t acknowledge his grief. They place a band aid over his heart, and crudely stitch his soul back together. They pretend he is the hero they want and ignore the ways they destroyed him. But Harry knows. He will never be his own. He could easily say yes. He could resign himself to the inevitable and let himself be a living specter. He could deny himself that which fate dictates is his own because he is not what they will want and he does not have it in him to give them the future they deserve. He doesn’t even have it in him to be true to himself. He’s so pathetic he can’t even admit that this is not the life he had wanted. He had wanted to be free, to tour the world pursuing some farfetched dream of stages and tours as if he had any right to it all. Not for the fame but for the music, for the sake of living. Except maybe he’s already dead. Maybe this is all he has left?

There’s precious few things to live for. The itch underneath his skin grows. The days pass by, and they’re filled with letters and visits to a little boy that has lost everything because of Harry. Ron and Hermione have stopped knocking on the door, Molly has moved onto Howler’s, Neville hasn’t written a letter, Luna is off on some expedition with her father, Ginny cares for the superficial. And it’s just. Harry doesn’t want to step out into a world that only wants him for what they can make him out to be. He barely does it when Andromeda, in some sick mockery of familial loyalty begged him to intercede on the Malfoy’s behalf. He almost tells her he would’ve done it without the embarrassment it causes her but in the end figures it’ll make a better story for the press as to why Harry Potter defends longtime rival.

When he closes his eyes Harry can see his future. He can see a career in the ministry, first as some ballsy junior auror with a little more experience than others to justify his confidence. Then a senior, maybe even head auror, fighting crime and evil, going toe to toe with dark lords just as he’s always done. 

It would be safe and comfortable and maybe not happy but satisfactory. It would be what he knows best, conforming to what they wanted of him.

He’d marry Ginny at 23, and have three children in quick succession. James, Albus, and Lily. It would be a happily ever after. A picturesque ending to a nightmarish life, perhaps only threatened if Ginny’s desire for the idea of Harry Potter died in the place of her desire for her soulmate. But the possibility would be so minuscule and the public shame unbearable that the threat would be nonexistent and instead destroy any remnantsof love or friendship between them. This is what the Wizarding World wants.

But what if that isn’t what he wants?

What if that life would kill him just as easily as Voldemort had? What if even attempting to live it now had already done so and only piled more dirt upon his tombstone?

•*•*

Andromeda’s heavy lidded eyes watch him with a guarded expression. Harry thinks she’s worried about the baby in his arms. He would be too, if a stranger with the smell of death approached something he loved so dearly. She doesn’t say a word, however, and Harry rambles incessantly, looking down at the now turquoise hair Teddy sports in an effort to avoid her gaze. He stops her probing questions with sips of tea and bites of biscuits.

It’s just as he’s to leave, three or four hours later, that the matronly woman stops him. Most of their meetings were tinged with a bit of awkwardness and the occasional long silences. She wasn’t sure how to act around him, and he constantly feared bringing more death and destruction to her door. The memory of Ted Tonks in the woods and Nymphadora inches from her husband

still prominent in his mind. Nevertheless, somewhere along the way they’d grown fond of each other. Enough to care for each other outside of the little boy they both loved.

“Harry,” She says with a softness he’s only ever heard from Molly. Her eyes are sad and they glisten with an emotion he doesn’t need. Andromeda grabs his hand like she knows he’s falling.

“Talk to me,” she begs, “What’s wrong?” And for a moment he imagines this is what a mother feels like but Lily Potter is dead and Molly Weasley is better off, so he breaks himself out of that delusion.

“I-I can’t.” Harry whispers and only relents at her insistent prodding.

“I can’t stay here Andy. Not anymore, not now.” He glances off into some unknown point in the distance, swallows before admitting what he hadn’t wanted to with a grim finality. “Maybe not ever again.”

She doesn’t say anything as he attempts to collect himself.When the tightness in his throat subsides, he continues with a single breath.

“Everywhere I look, all I see, is them. All I see is how they died—“

“and it’s all my fault.” He ends after a pause. He sees Andromeda’s vehement disapproval in the tilt of her chin and the fierceness of her brows.

“It is.” Harry says, with a tad more force and desperation than the situation required. His nails dig into her arm in a vain attempt to convince her. “I killed them. I did this. I ruined everything. I killed Sirius, I killed Remus. I killed Fred. I killed Tonks.”

Andromeda’s dark eyes widen. Somewhat detachedly, Harry thinks she looks like Bellatrix Lestrange staring down Molly Weasley’s spell. He’s not quite numb as the woman turns and flees, but it’s close enough that his legs almost give out under him. His heart gives a painful squeeze and he debates apologizing before resolutely walking out, sure this is the last time he’ll see Andy and Teddy.

•*•*

They pack their bags in the dead of the night.

“Are you sure?” He asks in a whisper, deathly afraid of what this will mean for her. He has no reason to worry. She cups his chin. Looks him straight in the eyes with a painful honesty. She speaks the words to an old promise even if she doesn’t know of them or their history; of the twisted selfish love that won a war.

After all this time?

“Always.”

Days before his eighteenth birthday, Harry Potter vanishes, Andromeda Tonks disappears.

A week later, Harry Styles, his mother Anne, and his nephew Teddy move into Holmes Chapel.

A month later, Luna Lovegood kisses her father’s cheek, waves her goodbye and Anne’s younger daughter Gemma returns from her trip abroad.

A year after that, with four names on his chest, Harry auditions for a show that changes his life.

•*•

Harry Potter first learns to sing the day Petunia Dursley drags him to church.

It hadn’t been her intention to bring him. Dudley was off with Vernon for some Father-Son Field Day Grunnings was hosting and Vernon had taken the boy on the excuse of showing him the real world of men. Petunia had begrudgingly conceded, outwardly annoyed at being separated from her Dudders but inwardly slightly pleased to be free of the boy’s tantrums. Originally her plan involved EastEnders while Harry weeded the garden. Only Harry had accidentally knocked over some supplies and Petunia had been furious at the commotion which had attracted a next door neighbor, also outside weeding. Petunia took the opportunity to peer over the fence and have a demure conversation with Mrs Whatever from Next Door. They would have remained there for the next couple hours if the neighbor hadn’tsubtly implied that any good household went to church weekly and promptly shuttered off herself. Offended and red in the face, Petunia had prepared for a week, and when Dudley turned red in the face at the mere suggestion of going to a place that required him to be quiet for an hour, she took the car and returned an hour later with a respectable outfit for Harry. In her words, “Perhaps God will take the freakishness out of you.”

Dressed in a suit that pinches his skin uncomfortably, Harry counts his blessings and hopes he doesn’t look as ridiculous as Aunt Petunia in her canary yellow dress. The ensemble clashes horribly with her straw colored hair, burnt orange eyeshadow, strikingly white fake pearl necklace, and the bright red lipstick she’d chosen to wear. He thinks one of the Reverends almost faints at the sight of her entrance and he knows for sure some of the other mothers had openly laughed.

They sit together at one of the pews. Petunia awkwardly places her purse by her side and picks up a book of hymns. Harry doesn’t so much as mind, it’s nice to look around and play pretend. Some old ladies and their daughters or granddaughters even coo at him as he swings his feet back and forth; at age five they barely reach halfway to the ground. They don’t seem to mind him as much as they do Petunia; discreetly, many whisper something about new money and bad blood.

The whole gathering is boring and Harry kind of wants to sleep but knows he can’t. After spending most of last night outside in the cold when he’d failed to finish his chores, Harry would very much like a nap but he doesn’t say anything because he knows Aunt Petunia would cuff him on the back of the neck as soon as she could do it without anyone seeing and calling CPS. Worse, she’d complain to Uncle Vernon and then he’d really be in for it. He’d rather not be locked in the cupboard again. The nights were getting longer and colder, and sometimes the noises outside scared him. Harry doesn’t like to think about the dark or the cold or the noises of neighbors yelling and animals scurrying around. He tries to keep his mind occupied on all the kinds of people around. It gets a little easier when the choir starts to sing.

“Jerusalem the golden,

With milk and honey blest,

Beneath thy contemplation

Sink heart and voice oppressed:

I know not, O I know not,

What social joys are there!

What radiancy of glory,

What light beyond compare!

And when I fain would sing them

My spirit fails and faints,

And vainly would it image

The assembly of the Saints.”

He doesn’t know exactly what he’s saying. Some words are weird, either too long or too unknown, or too hard to pronounce when you’re missing a front tooth, but there’s a flutter in his chest; a skip in his heart; a light in his mind. And maybe it wouldn’t matter as much if it were any other boy but this is Harry. He’s singing with other people. He’s never done anything with anyone. Not together. Not as if they were friends. Not as if he actually meant something other than Freak or Boy or the little delinquent. It’s as if he were human.

Maybe its a horrible song, maybe it denounces someone or insults an old stomping ground of whoever God is. But.

Harry sings.

He stands in a tiny, cheaply made suit that pinches him under his arms and chokes his neck and is short by a good inch or two but fits him well enough in overall appearance. He rocks on the bench, tries to dance around. Petunia tries vainly to make him sit down. She yanks harshly on his arm, whispers threateningly in his ear, says she’ll tell Vernon, he’ll get a beating this time, a year in the cupboard with no food for freaks like him. Harry trembles at her words and visibly pales. But he sings and continues to dance because even as young as he is he finds that he likes it and its freeing and if he has to die for something why not let it be for something he loves?

(Years later he’ll laugh because in the end, dying for them hadn’t mattered all that much if they didn’t love him back.)

Harry’s little show does not go unnoticed. The ladies of before visibly aww and garner the attention of a priest about to conduct a sermon. They tear him from Petunia’s desperate claws, hold him up to a podium, and they let him sing as best as he can.

When the mass is over, the entire congregation applauds Petunia for raising such a remarkably kind, lovable, and talented young man. The praise she receives is the only thing that saves him from a beating that night, though he is still sent to bed without food. For some years, Petunia even deigns to arrange some singing lessons with Mrs Figg next door. They aren’t very good, and the lady is often forgetful or appears as if she doesn’t know what she’s doing at all, but people still praise Harry. They make him feel special and included. They make him want to sing for the rest of his life.

But he doesn’t.

The years go by and in the beginning Harry sings.

He sings as a little boy, alone in the cupboard.

Sings again, a little bigger under the stars in a hut before a giant takes him away.

Sings a little more, under his breath, on a scarlet train every year.

Sings when he’s alone, when he’s scared, when he’s set off as a pig to slaughter.

When he faces Draco Malfoy in the dead of the night in first year and wonders why they can’t be friends. Sings when they meet every year after, understanding wordlessly just how alike they are and how different a simple twist of fate and family made them.

Harry watches groups of other students sing under Professor Flitwick’s instruction. He doesn’t know the precise terms, doesn’t know what voice control or tone is. He’s useless at reading notes partially because his glasses are useless for seeing and partially because he’s too afraid to ask. He hangs on the periphery, pretends to admire, and when he’s alone his mouth forms the vowels and syllables

He sings a sad song when Sirius dies and after that he sings no more. He never tells his friends of a talent beyond staying alive. Barely even told Sirius in the dead of the night, while the older man drank as if his life depended on it. Harry hadn’t once looked at the man as he said the words. His hands had trembled, his voice unbelievably shaky. It hadn’t mattered. Sirius passed out on his feet, whispering James all the while. Luna somehow knows though she never says a word, and by the time they meet in the bathroom in sixth year, Draco Malfoy doesn’t mention the two stupid boys they used to be. The choice is taken away seconds later when he’s drowning in his own blood.

Dumbledore doesn’t mention the change. He doesn’t ask if Harry feels different. He knows that something has irreparably broken inside his toy soldier and he doesn’t care. Not enough, not really, not when the greater good is at stake. This timethe Headmaster sacrifices the good of the one for the good of the many. This time he refuses to let his bleeding heart get in the way of victory. But it still feels wrong to Albus Dumbledore. The feeling shakes him to the core and grips a forgotten piece of his soul. He remembers the stories Arabella once told, of a little boy with a dream in his heart and a light in his eyes. The boy grew up. Slowly the light died. A part of him wants to save that light but he knows that if he doesn’t kill it, Tom Riddle will. The pain from that would be devastating.

He places the memory in a pensieve. Soldiers can’t have dreams and hopes. In the end, they’re weapons with a conscience and a desire to do right by their morals and the greater good. Soldiers are good men and no matter the cost, even their sanity and morals, good men go to war to protect what they love. If Albus Dumbledore is lucky, this one will be a martyr. He will die by the end of the war and his broken dreams will mean nothing to the people he saved because he saved them.

Dumbledore kills the boy to make the man. He never cries. Or at least, not until he gazes past the end of his own wand in Severus’ hands towards the boy in the cloak he knows is there.

What have I done?

The boy is dead; delivered like a pig to slaughter, he became a martyr.

Harry Potter does not sing as he walks towards his death. Harry meets his worst enemy, looks him in the eye, and dies without nary a song or a whisper. There will be no great epic, no harmonious hymn. There is only silence.

He puts away the song of his life, locks it deep, and tries not to look back. He refuses to sing when the butcher, now old, regretful and dead, begs in the train station of his childhood.

He returns to a school covered in bodies. Hermione, Ron, Molly, Ginny, George, Percy, Arthur, Bill, Fleur, Charlie, Neville, Luna, Cho, Terry, Angelina, Katie, Oliver, Draco—Everyone attempts to hug him or offer comfort. He doesn’t need it because it was all his fault and he can never sing for himself again. The green eyed wizard leaves a broken school behind. He hides away, and lets Harry Potter die.

Its’s locked up in Grimmauld Place, after trials and trials, that The Man Who Conquered learns to sing for someone else.

He sings again for Teddy. The happy boy is teething and refuses to sleep but maybe, maybe this will help him in the way it couldn’t help Harry. Eventually, Harry learns to sing for himself. He’s not quite the soldier or the martyr anymore.

He sings again, alone on a stage. This time he’s sixteen year old Harry Styles. This time he thinks he might make it.

This time he takes special nutrition potions every morning in an attempt to overcome his vertical challenge, bleaches black hair and dyes it brown. He’s small enough to pretend to be three years younger than he is and this works great because everyone searches for Harry Potter, eighteen years old, long messy black hair. Instead there’s Harry Styles, sixteen and with the right hair cut, he’s got curly brown hair and some cute dimples. And maybe, maybe, Harry Styles could be his own star.

He takes the stage, and he forgets who he was. He ignores the four names that encircle his torso hidden under an aptly cast glamor. They belong to another boy, another life.

He sings for what he could’ve been and finds what he is.

•*•*•

He meets Louis first.

Louis is a lot of his firsts.

They’re in a bathroom, not necessarily romantic but not the worst place to meet in. Harry’s about to finish the actual act of going to the bathroom when Louis walks in and embarrassingly enough, Harry turns towards him.

A few seconds later, looking at the puddle beneath them, Harry wants to hide under a rock in hell and never emerge.

“Oops.” And really that’s all he can say.

“Hi,” the boy smiles, a full one with teeth and a little bit of teasing. Harry thinks he’s got a wonderful smile. Wonderful eyes too. Bright blue under a fringe of brown hair. He doesn’t realize he’s staring until the other boy clears his throat. Harry scrambles to fix himself, then starts ripping paper towels off the roll and apologizing profusely.

The boy doesn’t say a word, simply takes the napkins and helps Harry clean. Harry’s heart twinges at the unexpectedly cold reaction but reasons that given the current situation he couldn’t expect more. Dejectedly, Harry prepares to leave and never see this boy again.

“Louis.” The blue eyed guy says. For a moment Harry flounders, wants to say “That’s not my name,” before belatedly realizing that it’s his name. “Louis Tomlinson.” And he says it with such a shit eating grin as if he knows what he’s doing to Harry that Harry almost walks out of the room without even telling him his name.

“Harry. Harry P—Styles.” Midway through shaking Louis’ hand, Harry tenses.

Louis Tomlinson.

Louis Tomlinson.

Because what are the odds he’d meet one of them here. What are the odds that it’s a name on his body?

•*•*

He meets Niall next. It’s lunchtime, and one day he’ll laugh at how accurate the location summarizes Niall but on that day he can only think about how cold it is outside and how he’s missing his family.

Niall runs into him. It’s not an exaggeration. The smaller boy barrels into him as if he’s running from something or someone and instead of leaving Harry to his slow gravitational demise, he grabs his hand and pulls him along past the throngs of people until they’re alone in a small room used for storing equipment. Harry almost mourns the plate of food he’d left behind.

Then he notices the boy’s smile. He’s laughing all carefree and sunlight streams in from some high window. It’s all so perfect that his blonde hair (Harry is almost positive with an uncanny self awareness that its dyed) glows.

“Sorry, mate,” he says in a not too apologetic Irish accent. “I was practicing my golf swing. Turns out I didn’t exactly have a club, and I don’t have the best swing.”

In a fit of giggles, Harry learns his name is Niall Horan, and he’s funny and sweet. He dreams of playing golf.According to Niall and a quiz he took online he’s a strong silent type with just the right mix of danger to be a bad boy. Harry thinks he’s just a bit delusional but the right amount of lovely to make anyone fall in love with him.

And Harry could, but—

On his back, beneath the words Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, there is also a black Niall Horan in sprawling handwriting. There can be no exceptions.

•*•*

Liam is the third. They meet in choreography. Harry isn’t quite sure how to dance, and figures it has to be easier than fighting a war. He’s already done the latter and come out of it with better reflexes but he quickly realizes faster response time does not a good dancer equal. He’s mid twirl when he collides with the boy next to him. Straight out of some romcom he falls safely into the other boy’s arms but still manages to twist his ankle.

Half an hour later, Harry Styles is scolded by a blushing Liam Payne who refuses to look him in the eyes but stares at Harry’s face with a burning intensity. He learns that Liam cares more than he lets on, that he’s a careful boy to a fault but never fearful, that he’s kind and strong and smart, that he will never be Harry Styles’. Harry says goodbye and intends to mean it forever. This is a competition. People are eliminated every week. He can leave whatever they could have had here. He can continue on with his life. There is no guarantee that Harry has to do anything to purposefully avoid him.

•*•*

Zayn is the last, and Harry almost regrets it in hindsight. (Five years later, Zayn is the first to leave.)

They run into each other late at night, before they’re all eliminated. Harry eager to sleep, Zayn smoking a cigarette and quite possibly drawing in the light of the moon like some romantic movie darling. They don’t say much to each other. Just. Silence.

It’s not uncomfortable but Zayn introduces himself by the first light of dawn. His amber eyes look gold against the orange, pink, and purple hues of the sky. He slides a notebook across the bench, and asks Harry, somewhat reservedly, for his opinion.

“This is amazing,” Harry whispers, enthralled by the pencil sketches and pen outlines. Some of the works are even in color and they remind Harry of old tomes in Hogwarts. Drawings so carefully made and precisely placed. The other boy turns away at the praise but he looks at Harry in a new light and then extends his hand.

“Zayn Malik.”

Harry doesn’t stay long after that reveal. There is a part of his heart that will break if he does. He stays for as long as he can, and finds out Zayn Malik almost has as many sisters as Louis Tomlinson. He likes comic books and thinks the MCU could be great, but loves to draw and sing even more. He wants a career in R&B and a chance to make it. Harry thinks Zayn could, but never assumes that he’ll ever be apart of that future. Zayn is better off without him, just as all his other boys. And yet, in those short moments, Harry can imagine his future.

He can imagine a life with all five of them. He can imagine telling them of how they are meant to be. Maybe they’d move in together in some nice house in a little village. Maybe have some children who can cast spells as easily as they breathe. But he also knows how crazy his story sounds, and he knows that they might never believe him. He could end up like one of those wizarding-muggle couples. One of them always living a lie and obliviating the other until they both go mad either out of grief or the constant onslaught of mental manipulation. He can’t do that to them. So he runs.

He meets his boys on accident and thinks nothing of it. He never says a word or tells them exactly who he is. He gives them his name, a smile, lets himself dream and then he leaves as easily as he came.

It’s fate and luck and some universe’s vendetta that they’re all brought back together but it doesnt matter in the end.

Simon Cowell gives them a chance, and they look at each other, speechless at the opportunity, and take the shot.

•*•*

The first year is crazy. It’s not what Harry expected at all. And he thinks he might have never survived it if he didn’t have the boys, Louis especially, at his side. They spend the days singing and practicing. By the end, Harry shuffles fo bed with an ache in his bones and his vision slightly blurry.

None of them remember their first meetings with him beyond a vague memory. Not the way he wants them too beyond vague recollections of dimples and soft words but its for the best in terms of attachment. Let them remember him happy and nervous on a shared stage then melancholy and discomfited. It almost stings in a corner of his heart but then Louis with his blue eyes and cheeky smirk does something to distract Harry. Niall with a golden halo and warm smile drags him off to show him some new tune on his guitar. Liam, big brown eyes, likes a cuddle and Zayn, artistic genius with soft, golden eyes, likes an audience.

They find themselves on tour. They dance around like loons. It’s awkward at first and then it simply isn’t. The band spends the years on buses dodging rumors, engagements, and management. Harry, despite his best efforts, breathes a little faster when he films Best Song Ever with Zayn. Blushes when Louis pulls him close or slides into bed with him. Gasps when Niall presses their faces close together in some cheap parody of a kiss when the other boy is simply raving about some amazing dish or new song on his guitar. Melts when Liam, strict, neurotic but kind Liam, scolds him for something or the other but smiles and drags him off to watch a movie.

Harry feels something so distinctly different in their relationship from any other friendship he’s ever had. Doesn’t feel the distinct discomfort that tinged his friendship with Hermione and Ron whenever he thought about how he ruined their lives, or the crippling sentiment that suffocated him when he saw Draco in the halls. When he goes to see Andy and Luna and Teddy, sometimes with a boy or two or three or four after they’ve all magically appeared at his and Louis’ door, his mum and sister exchange knowing looks but say little.

There are bumps in the road, obstacles that almost destroy him. Harry falls in love with Louis first and he wants. His body shakes with it, every glance, every touch. He thinks he’s subtle, that no one will know

It’s ok in the beginning. Louis and Harry live together. But the fans speculate and management intervenes and suddenly Harry has 400 girls a year and Louis has Eleanor and, and.

It hurts when he looks at how they’ve changed. When he compares, Always in my heart to Larry is the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever heard and they’re friendship falls apart and Harry can’t get out of bed because he gave Louis everything he had without ever saying anything and he had hoped, begged only to be left with what feels like nothing.

Harry meets Eleanor and he knows this is the beginning of the end even if Louis doesn’t look at her with love until years later. She’s pretty and kind and there’s an attraction there Harry presumes Louis can act freely on unlike his own for the messy haired boy.

Louis comes home one night, slightly tipsy and lips red.

“I think I’m in love, Haz.” He says it with a stupid grin, pink cheeks, and soft blue eyes. Harry’s world cracks.

So he kisses Louis, truly, deeply, madly on some September 28, 2013. He sees this as his last shot, a last stand as Eleanor’s presence grows. They’re drunk and it isnt at all what he imagined after years of dancing around each other. He wants Louis to be lucid or to at least sweep him off his feet and act like this one little kiss which would have meant the world to Harry years ago means something to him. Instead, Louis goes still. Louis pulls away. Louis raises his hand and Harry flinches because that look in his eye somehow reminds him of Vernon Dursley and the cupboard under the stairs of a previous life. It’s the look of someone shaken to their core and so clearly discomfited by it. It’s the stare of a person who hates what he sees. Louis drops his hand and flees. Harry falls to the ground and pretends his face is dry.

They don’t talk about it. The boys notice and they try to fix things but they’re all afraid of things they don’t want to admit. They let it go and in a matter of months Harry stays locked up in his room watching videos of how they used to be. Back when Louis didn’t avoid his glances, didn’t shy away from his touch, didn’t pretend like Harry was a stranger. Hadn’t moved out because he hadn’t yet realized Harry was too disgusting for anyone to love and to stupid to realize it. He watches as Louis and Zayn grow closer, watches as Liam hugs Louis with a tenderness he wishes they could all share, as Louis smiles stupidly at Niall.

He looks at Louis and thinks, ‘Would it be so bad to love me?’ He thinks it must be, and Harry never kisses the other boys the way he wants to. One day, this will all end. When that day comes, Harry Styles will disappear and become the pathetic boy from the cupboard no one could ever love. Until then, he acts as if he has nothing left to lose.

He falls in love with Zayn not too long after he falls in love with Louis. A part of him thinks his constant mixed signals destroyed his chances with at least one of his boys but he knows they loved him and each other and if maybe he had been honest things would’ve been better.

Zayn is the hardest one to figure out. A part of Harry thinks the boy must love him. They share just as many glances and touches as he and Louis. Except where everything is so pure, unadulterated love with Louis, its lust and desire and passion and the untamable, selfish love with Zayn. It’s a fire that destroys everything if left on its own, scorching the earth, obliterating everything you hold dear. And he thinks that maybe this is why he’s left with four boys to love him. Because by themselves anyone of them would be too much. Harry falls in love with Zayn in the midst of smoke and sleepy eyes. They sing to each other on stage, they dance around everything but its there.

Harry goes to Zayn whenever he wants someone to just listen, when Louis turns unbearably petulant, when Liam can’t let things go, when Niall refuses to take things seriously and think about something other than Ellie Goulding or Selena Gomez. Zayn holds him when he cries and sketches drawings on his arms. Zayn is there like no one else is. And then, he falls in love and its not with Harry.

Her name is Perrie and she’s beautiful and talented and she’s everything that Zayn deserves. They’ve dated for a while but one day there’s a change in Zayn, a shine in his eyes and a warmth in his eyes. Harry knows realistically it might not last, from what he sees its not true love yet, but its there and solid and far more possible than whatever any of the boys could have together.

It ruins Harry. Then it ruins Zayn because by then they’ve all loved each other too much to be content with someone else or to be happy with whoever they want. Harry knows its his fault, that he should reject the bond and let Zayn love who he wants without feeling an unknown yearning and empty soul. But he can’t, and then what happens after is his fault. Somewhere along the way, Louis eschews Eleanor and Harry for something more liberating. He gazes longingly at Liam, Niall, Harry, but it’s Zayn, cool, calm, collected Zayn he seeks out. To an extent, Harry understands; being with Zayn is like hanging onto a balloon with no tether. It’s inevitable that the self sabotage starts in an attempt to reach the ground. Zayn parties with Louis, kisses him the way Harry wishes they all could each other, gets high off of half a dozen things he shouldn’t. He dodges management and hides for hours. They sleep with girls and cheat on their girlfriends trying to fill some void Harry knows he could end. He cuddles with Liam after long concerts and days when he wishes it all would end. Harry knows. He watches and he wants. The itch in his skin grows unbearable. The marks on his back burn. This is fate, this is it. There is a proximity in their actions and their love that tells Harry the possibility is there. Fate has screwed him far too much for it not to be there and ready for the taking.But Harry is young and stupid and he can’t ruin them. Falling in love and admitting it would ruin who they are, the tenuous relationships they had and put them all at risk. As much as Harry loves to pretend, he’s not Harry Styles, he’s Harry Potter and if anyone were to ever find out, they’d never let him go. They’d threaten everything he loves. So, he lets it all fall apart.

Zayn kisses Liam when the latter is happy with Sophia and watches the demise of their relationship. Kisses Niall when they’re both too drunk to remember. Kisses Louis and pretends they were too drunk to remember.

Kisses Harry in 2014, just as the year ends. Just as everything ends. Just as Harry almost told the truth and broke down with the stress of it all because no one listens anymore and they’re all fed up with what he hides. All the tattoos, all the promises—they mean nothing if he can’t ever be honest with them.

He’s alone in his room, after some concert. After another meeting with management, after yelling about how he’s such a fag, and how he needs to stop acting so gay, after they arrange another “date” with another girl he barely even knows in order to fuel another article about how much of a whore he is. The boys don’t know, not really. Louis dating Eleanor and ignoring Harry had done enough to get them off his back years ago and the rest of them never seemed to be around when the shouting matches and the threats occurred. Harry feels a bottomless chasm grow somewhere beneath his heart and above his stomach. It’scold and dark. He wants Louis, he wants Zayn. But he can never have them.

Harry parties like he’ll die of alcohol poisoning by the morning. He doesn’t sleep with 400 girls a year, but he does sleep around. Rolls out of one bed in the morning only to fall into another one by night time. Nick tries to help. They don’t know each other well in the beginning, pushed together out of necessity during an event where all the boys were off on their own. They’ve barely scratched the surface of who they were with interviews, all Harry knows for sure is that Louis hates Nick and the rest of them don’t quite love him either but put up with him for Harry. The curly haired boy uses this to his advantage, and the radio host becomes his escape. Nick introduces him to people, sends him off to LA to forget, and drink, and party, and fuck. For a while it works. Then he crashes and burns and almost ends up dying. None of the boys notice as he drowns in bottles of alcohol. Nick tries. He does.But he kisses Harry when he’s alone and vulnerable and so in love with someone else. Nick tells him he loves him but how can he when he doesn’t know who Harry is? They spend time apart after that. Texting each other in the middle of the night, calls right before a concert, but they never try anything again. Harry needs to find a way through his grief. He swims out of it slowly, but he falls in love twice more.

With Liam, the actual part of falling in love is done so carefully and slowly that by the time he realizes it, the other boy is falling in love with someone else. Her name is Danielle and Harry thinks she’s lovely but he wishes it were any one of his boys in Liam’s arms and not her. Zayn would be better. Liam is the rational, responsible, independent one, the boy next door. He’s the one Harry goes to when he wakes up alone and screaming and Louis is off with Eleanor and not in the same hotel room as him. Liam is the one he can go to when he needs reassurance. Their type of love isn’t as soul searching as Louis’, not as passionate as Zayn’s, or as carefree as Niall’s. It doesn’t make it any lighter, less significant, less important.

Liam is there for Harry when he hits the darkest part of his life. He’s there when Louis leaves for Eleanor, when Zayn is off with Perrie, when Niall is stuck in whatever love triangle of the week he’s in. Though the latter, Harry thinks could be a jealous over dramatization on his part. It’s not that Liam doesn’t have his own significant others, but its that Liam doesn’t let matters of the heart complicate the simple act of caring in an honest friendship like the others might. With Liam Harry feels important, cared for, loved even if it can’t be the romantic kind. Liam’s all smiles and bright eyes. He’s the best friend you always fall in love with. He’s the guy that stays at home as you go on countless dates trying to feel something. You don’t know how futile it is, you don’t know you have all you need right in front of you. And then one day, you wake up with another broken heart and you realize this is it. He’s the one for you. Liam is the one that Harry can imagine growing old with the easiest. Liam is loyal love and Harry wishes he could be with him. He longs for him like he longs for nothing else. But he can’t so he settles for stolen glances and dances on stage. He settles for silent “I love you’s” and light touches. He can pretend it’s all for show, and he can let it go. It’s on the stage that he falls in love again.

Falling in love with Niall is like floating. Its nice and cool and easy because he’s easy to love. Harry almost forgets that Niall is his soulmate. He falls in love with him somewhere between what feels like the 500th round of FIFA and the 6000th Guinness he sees Niall down. Niall’s the one with a smile. When Harry first meets him, he even compares him to Fred or George. There’s something easy going and mischievous about him, but not exactly in the sometimes mean spirited manner that the Weasley twins, now just George, or Louis possess. Niall laughs like everyday is another wonder. Where Liam protects, Niall needs protection. He’s someone Harry can hold tight and look after. Niall is everything Harry wants to be. Niall is the one he can come back to on the bad days, the one that waits on the stoop of a house on a rainy day, soaked to the bone until one of his boys comes home with an umbrella and doesn’t even care that they took so long. He’s vibrant and blindingly bright. Bubbly to the point of annoyance, warm to the point of burning but Harry doesn’t mind. He loves it all. He loves the way Niall hugs him, cuddling on the couch like two baby koalas. He loves the way he moves on the stage, guitar in hand and dreams in the other.

Harry wants to give Niall everything. He’s ready to give all of himself, not in the same way he had with Louis, but close enough and just as real. Hermione once said he had a hero complex. He wanted to save everyone. Harry hadn’t believed her until Niall. He denied the accusations and the endless proof until it slaps him in the face.

He denied it because he knows what Hermione would say. Harry would give all of himself on an altar and get nothing in return. Nothing. But with Niall, it feels as if being next to him is everything. They dance in darkened arenas, Niall teaches him how to play the guitar in the bunks of a now old tour bus. They visit all the monuments in the world, tour cities like Paris and Belgium and Johannesburg. New York, LA. It’s not the places that astound him. It’s Niall, by his side, glowing like an angel.

Harry’s favorite places aren’t the cities they tour or the arenas they play in. He cares little for the performance itself, even less for the wonders of the world.

None of it would matter if he didn’t have his boys by his side. Harry loves the days when they can all forget. When they cuddle in a bunk together, squished to the extreme but not annoyed by the proximity of others. They spend nights in the dark, under covers, hotel rooms, mini bars, champagne, private planes, this is all before the end. There’s nothing overtly romantic, but it is intimate and lovely, and Harry falls in love with them all just a little more. They know who he is, who he wants them to think he is. He’s Harry to them. Harry. And its wonderful, beautiful, tragic because they’ll never know all of him. He thinks they know this, but they never say. Some nights Louis looks inexplicably angry; he glares at Harry for existing, blue eyes staring daggers into his soul in an attempt to figure him out and only stopping when he notices how Harry cowers. An apologetic look mars his features before he pretends like nothing happened and sits by his boys. Zayn examines him silently, an unreadable expression in his gaze tinged with the barest hint of hurt whenever he wakes Harry out of nightmares with silent screams and the younger boy stays silent despite the darker haired one’s pleas. Liam hesitates in his hugs when he notices Harry flinch away from touch, brown eyes wary and yearning for something Harry can’t give. They soften only when Harry slips a hand into his, and leads him down a pointless conversation. Niall laughs off the awkward pauses in conversation when Harry refuses to divulge his thoughts; he pastes a smile on his face that becomes real only when Harry tells him something insignificant of his childhood. Like how he’s afraid of dogs because a mean one once almost chased him up a tree. He doesn’t tell Niall that the dog did in fact chase him up a tree, nor that his aunt and uncle left him there all night and laughed when they saw him still perched up there the next morning too afraid to risk the dog and he possibility of falling.

Harry tells them nothing and for a long time, in the loneliness of themselves, it’s okay. They still love him.

And then it’s not. And they don’t love him.

•*•*•

The beginning of the end starts slow enough.

Harry understands early that singing and being famous for something he’s actually done isn’t at all like he imagined. He sings songs that are fun but don’t necessarily make him feel anything. He dances around the stage in a futile attempt to feel the emotions of his life. He tells himself he’s happy but the life he lives reminds him too much of the life he’s left behind. His every move monitored, every relationship scrutinized. The only difference is that this time he does it for someone he loves and he convinces himself its enough. Rita Skeeter’s pop out of every corner to write suggestive stories of who he dates and sometimes it hurts to see the magazine covers and lewd stories but he endures because he knows it’s not true. He survives because he knows there is no other place he’d rather be.

Except, cracks begin to appear. By early 2014, he knows they won’t make it out of this.

They want answers. They know he holds back. They give as much of themselves as they can to him all while dealing with the demands of their families and girlfriends and management. Harry in comparison gives them nothing. He tells them little of his childhood friends and home. Holmes Chapel is barely a blip on their maps and he dodges the probing questions and please to visit with him. He knows no one in the small town that hasn’t had their memory altered in some way and while the charm works like a charm for bigger crowds and small scenes in feature movies, it won’t be nearly enough to uphold the story of small, nobody baker Harry Styles. All the stories he has told are grandiose fabrications to hide his loneliness and constant abuse. The most Harry can do for them is Anne, Gemma, and Teddy and even they are lies to an extent. Teddy is kept at a distance, more often than not left at home to avoid accidental slips. Gemma avoids the boys at all costs whenever one of them tracks her down individually, only interacting in groups where questions can be easily avoided or lost in the track of conversation. Anne distances herself from the other parents, especially Joannah once the other woman attempts to learn more about Harry and his feelings towards Louis. Andromeda likes the woman, and this wouldn’t be a problem except Joannah clearly wants to know more and even be friends with Anne. So do Trisha, and Karen, and Maura. Andromeda likes them all, thinks they’re lovely but they can’t know about magic and she can’t risk their lives. Once upon a time, Anne Styles had been a Black, and if there was one thing the Blacks could do it was ostracizing people and alienating them. The Styles distanced themselves, acted posher than they had any right to, and became the hags of the One Direction tour. Harry apologizes to them both relentlessly. They have sacrificed everything for his dreams, and he wants to give them the world but they refuse.

Luna cups his cheek one night. Her hair glows in the moonlight and he’s about to tell her how truly lovely she is when she says, “The Blumdingers have you Harry. It’s a hard infestation to overcome. Sometimes they hurt the ones you love, but it’s ok because the Snorkacks keep them away, and you have a lot of those.”

Harry thinks it’s a metaphor for love but if is is then she’s wrong because a relationship like this, like the one he has, clearly one sided, it can’t last.

By 2015 the band is crumbling. Zayn hates the music and maybe all of the boys. Louis hates Harry and what he himself has become. Niall has grown unhappy and for someone as bright as him, this is a killing blow. Liam is confused, lost, wants to find himself. They’ve spent five years together. Living and breathing in the same air. They’ve used up too much of each other to even think about helping the others. There’s a bitterness that lingers, and a resentment that destroys.

They fall apart. Zayn leaves. Liam leaves. Niall leaves. Louis leaves. It’s Harry, the one all the papers claimed would leave to start an amazing solo career, that ends up staying and begging for them to stay too. It doesn’t work. He cries his eyes out in a recording studio by the time each of the boys have said their piece. He waits until they’re gone to fall apart.

When they ask him, Liam with his wide eyes and big hair, Niall blue eyes and pleading air, and Louis five feet away vaguely angry and demanding, he can’t say no. They reassure him.

“It’ll only be temporary, Haz. A hiatus, you know.” Liam reassures him as he places his arms around the green eyed singer. Niall slips in after, and even Louis pats their backs. Harry puts on a brave face. He smiles and offhandedly remarks on his dream of acting. Except he wanted them by his side and now they’re all leaving him behind. This is the story of his life, the colors written on his walls. He’s not good enough and they’ll all leave, like James, Lily, Sirius, Remus, Petunia, Fred, Cedric, Dumbledore, and Snape.

He compares who the boys were to who they’ve become without Harry.

Zayn declares he wants to be normal but a year later he’s dating Gigi Hadid and dropping singles. (Harry follows his accounts anonymously and obsessively; he wonders if Zayn’s happy.)

Louis has a baby with a girl he meets in a club after ten glasses. (He calls Harry the same night, sobbing, and he says I love you but he never remembers and Harry thinks it’s all a joke.)

Niall is off writing an album and so clearly fine falling in love without Harry. He stops dying his hair blonde, writes a song about a girl. He’s no longer the boy Harry could protect. He’s outgrown that role, he’s moved on. (But when it’s dark, underneath his covers, Harry thinks he’s the one who could never grow up.)

Liam finds himself, falls in love, has a baby. Cheryl isn’t right for him, Harry thinks, but he’s happy in the meanwhile. He’s confident in a way he hadn’t been with the boys, for himself not for anyone else. (Cheryl walks the red carpet with Liam. Harry wishes it was him and not her.)

He sees what its done to them.

He sees his dream is about to end and he never finds out about what could’ve been. There’s just too many lies, too much bad blood. Perrie and Eleanor and Danielle and Taylor and Sophia and Ellie and Selena and the fact that these five boys so clearly love each other in a world that tells them its wrong. A world that Harry could break them out of if he wasnt such a bloody coward. A world he could let them be a part of if he just let them go and severed the red strings of fate that tie his souls to theirs and theirs to him and theirs to each other. People can do it, have done it. Purebloods with centuries of lineage and whom can not be bothered by scandals. Yet he can’t. Maybe not never but not now.

He writes a song. Two really. One he writes with Louis, but it barely touches the surface of who they are. Barely screams out how perfect he finds them. He lets the world think its about Taylor, the blonde girl he barely knew for a matter of months but that understood him in a way the others couldn’t.

They’d been at a party in New York. The air was cold, but something about it felt like home. The light of the moon framed her face, curling along the sharp jut of her cheek bones and filling out the softness of her face. Her blue eyes met his, some sympathetic emotion in them.

“Publicity’s a bitch.” She had said, smoke curling around her red lips and never had he ever wanted to love someone else more than in that moment. She’s the one he calls when he needs an opinion. She listens, she fixes, he should love her, why can’t he and then—

If I could fly, I’d be coming right back home to you.

I think I might give up everything just ask me to.

And he would. He’d give up everything for these boys because he’s already done it once for people that hadn’t ever loved him and so what was one more sacrifice for them? They don’t ask him with words. They don’t have to. Zayn’s departure and radio silence speak loudly, and the rest of them have blindsided Harry. Made in the AM, the aftermath, After Malik, this is their last album. It’s the last way Harry can tell them he loves them in whatever way he can without ever saying the words. This is their last hurrah before they all implode and hate each other like Zayn. So he sings, he goes on tour. He watches Louis spiral out of control, watches Niall’s light slowly dim with them and then fly off to light up for others; he watches Liam give up. He can’t stop it, he loves them so much but they’ve changed and in the end it may not be the best thing for him but it is the best thing for them. Modest and Syco have enough clauses to prevent any of them from fully leaving. In another world, someone else might have martyred themself in an attempt to save the other boys. In this world, Harry writes a check from the numerous accounts at Gringotts left to him and finds that the greedy demands of both companies barely make a dent in his accounts. They assume he’s broke and flat on his back. He lets them believe it and walks away unscathed.

The day after their last concert, the day after tour ends, they all part ways. Harry severs the bond. He cuts it off, and instantly a million tiny knives pierce his skin. Its the cruciatus all over again and Harry knows its because he’s the only one who acknowledged the bond.The bond is two sided, and when one side of it breaks, denies it, refuses it, the pain can be unbearable. Harry has four soulmates. Four. And he loves them. He doesn’t want to break this bond and his soul knows it. The green eyed wizard wants to protect them from everything he can regardless of his own health. When a bond is broken, muted, denied, the soul expresses its pain on whatever soul initiated it. Harry writhes on the ground for days, and by the end of it the bond can not be fully broken so long as he loves them all. It is quiet, calmer, muted enough so that he knows his boys can move on and fall in love. They can marry without feeling empty and aching for something they can not name.

The memories will always be there. He will never forget. What he lived becomes inked on his skin like every other tattoo Harry gained. Harry Potter became Harry Styles became Harry became Hazza. He would give anything to still be Hazza, even if only in memory because once upon a time he would’ve said Harry Potter was all he’d want to be. Later, he’d said the same of Harry Styles. But Hazza. Hazza is Louis’, Liam’s, Zayn’s, Niall’s. He is the truest person Harry could be. And for the longest time that was enough. A part of him wants to break into the Department of Mysteries, steal a time turner and rewrite everything. It screams, go back, go back you stupid idiot and don’t let it end. But really, he wouldn’t care if it ended again. He just wanted to start it all over again.

*•*•*

He writes Two Ghosts somewhere in his heartbroken haze. Packs up his bags. Apologizes to Andromeda and Luna for all he made them give up. For the five years of lies and pretending.

He wants to say goodbye to the boys and the people on tour and their record label and management and basically anyone whose ever helped him throughout the years. He wants to tell them that this is the end. Maybe he’ll drop an album but never tour and recede into reclusiveness, ignoring invitations for weddings and baby showers and album launch parties. He’s not who he used to be, who he wanted to be. The Man Who Conquered recedes out of this identity and instead sends out a lawyer to settle out all his assets. His new and short term publicist releases a statement announcing his possibly temporary retirementfrom the music industry and then Harry leaves his flat in London.

They’re not who they used to be.

They’re just ghosts, pale imitations of the men Harry loves. Harry’s standing, glass half empty, trying to feel his heart beating.

And.

It ends.

His home is gone. Who he was is dead. Harry Styles lets the dye wash out of his hair; raven black now somehow permanently lighter, hair tamable and more curly than unruly. He glances in the mirror of the topmost bathroom of Grimmauld Place and its so clearly him, those green eyes can’t lie, but an integrable part of his heart has changed and if he looks at himself in the right light, the man in the mirror is unrecognizable. The world he lives in is unrecognizable. So he returns to the one place that tried to mold him into something that would have killed him before. He’s dead; there is no better option. Coke bottle glasses find their way to his bedside, silk black robes hang in his closet. He accepts the role of perfect soldier and falls in line. He firecalls Draco Malfoy through an illegal connection, asks how he’s been, and they don’t mention it but they both remember a trial years ago and a debt that has been left unpaid. He calls in some favors with the man who once saved his life and whose life Harry once saved from prison and death. He enters the Wizengamot to a burst of applause and horror as the Most Noble and Ancient Lord Black sits beside Malfoy. He sends an application to the Auror Department, stops by Kingsley’s office to chat. Then he visits Minerva in the tower he once hated. He ignores Molly’s prodding and Hermione’s nagging. He accepts Ron’s manly hugs, stops by Weasley Wizard Wheezes and lets George kiss the top of his head. He sends the entire Wizarding World in an uproar when the Daily Prophet publishes his return, learning in the mush of balls, galas and ceremonies that Gigi Hadid, was apparently a witch, and then avoiding her at all costs. He’s not recognizable to those firmly planted in the Wizarding World, but he’s sure Gigi would notice the old friend of her boyfriend.Bitterly he wonders if she has a match and if she does, why she chose to mess with another’s. But Zayn, physically has no match. He’s a muggle, all the boys are, and no matter how much he wishes, none of them will ever bear his name.

Alone for the first time in a long time, Harry slinks beneath the covers, drowns his sorrows, and tries to forget.

I know you're somewhere out there

Somewhere far away

I want you back

I want you back.

•*•*•

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second attempt at writing. Hopefully it goes well. This idea came to me at night and it hasn’t left me in a while. I couldn’t find a fic like this anywhere so I wrote one hoping it would inspire a better writer to take up the cause. I’m new to the 1D fandom and an old stan of the HP fandom so please excuse any inaccuracies. I don’t care, I wrote this for fun and if you can do better, please do. I want to read it. Final warning, I’m bad at writing dialogue so this is all Harry being an angsty, introspective singer making wrong assumptions about the boys he loves.


End file.
